Friday, January 25, 2013

Washington
– It's called “shaping,” and it's all the rage among
behaviorists, statists, and other proponents of the nanny state.

If
a social engineer has a goal in mind, the strategy is to increase the
pain of certain types of behavior to a point of diminishing returns –
a give-up point at which the actor will relinquish long-held beliefs
and convictions in favor of an entirely new way of thinking and
reacting to daily stimuli.

The
result: A massive social shift from drinking to not drinking,
drugging to abstinence, or smoking to (cough, cough) “Would you
mind not smoking?”

Like
Ragú spaghetti sauce, it's in there, buried somewhere deep in the
Affordable Health Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010, a smoker's
penalty for unreconstructed users of tobacco smoking materials that
could cost a 55-year-old smoker $4,250 in penalties over and above
his premiums, a 60-year-old $5,100.

True,
everyone will be covered, but not everyone will get the best rate –
especially if they engage in the risky behavior of smoking tobacco,
which health experts estimate causes as many as 450,000 deaths per
year from its complications.

There
are no extra charges for the overweight patient, the diabetic, or those who
suffer from heart arrhythmia.

Those
who are covered by employers' programs may join smoking cessation
programs to get a break from the crushing expense of providing their own mandatory health insurance, something required by the new law, derisively nicknamed “Obamacare.”

One
is reminded of the legacy of Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer
who brought tobacco from the new colony of Virginia to the Court of
the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I.

It
is said that on one of his infrequent visits to his ancestral home, an
elderly manservant became confused when he saw plumes of smoke
curling out of Sir Walter's pipe. He doused the nobleman with a pail
of water.

Raleigh
left a small tobacco pouch in his cell at Bloody Tower on the day of
his beheading by order of King James.

Inscribed
upon it: “Comes meus fuit in ilo miserrimo tempore...” - the
Latin for “It was my companion at that most miserable time.”The floggings will continue until morale improves!